dionnepohler

Are vaccine mandates reasonable?

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 01:06:37 GMT

A Q&A with Canadian social scientist Dionne Pohler

See link to interview (with Tara Henley): Are vaccine mandates reasonable? (substack.com)

Universities must cite the science relied upon to justify vaccine mandate policies

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 01:11:38 GMT

Universities should uphold the communal norms of the scientific method.

See link to article: PRT-Must-Cite-Science-Relied-on-to-Justify-Their-Policies.pdf (usaskfaculty.ca)

Why vaccine mandates are in legal and ethical trouble

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 19:07:09 GMT

Vaccine mandates are unreasonable and coerce the least powerful workers.

In 2018, labour arbitrator William Kaplan adjudicated a dispute between St. Michael’s Hospital/Ontario Hospitals Association (OHA) and the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) over the employer’s “vaccinate or mask” (“VOM”) policy. The VOM policy required that nurses either receive the influenza vaccination or wear a mask during the entire flu season, which could last up to six months.

Sound at all familiar?

It should: the legal framework around previous vaccination policies like this one suggest that it will become increasingly difficult for employers to continue to justify more stringent “jab or job” mandates for COVID-19 vaccines. This is especially true when there are less invasive alternatives like testing available, and as evidence on waning COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and the coercive nature of these mandates becomes more widely understood by arbitrators, the courts, and the broader public.

When assessing employer policies in unionized workplaces, labour arbitrators like Kaplan use the “KVP test” — a set of conditions which places limits on management’s right to unilaterally set workplace policies.

One of those conditions is that the policy must be reasonable. As noted by Kaplan:

“The [policy is] subject to a reasonableness test. ... In reaching a conclusion, among the factors to be considered is the nature of the interests at stake, whether there are less intrusive means available to achieve the objective, and the impact of the particular policy on employees.”

Kaplan ultimately ruled that the St. Michael’s Hospital VOM policy was unreasonable. Kaplan’s finding was consistent with a previous one issued by Arbitrator James Hayes in a similar labour arbitration case a few years earlier over an identical vaccination policy (Sault Area Hospital/OHA v. ONA, 2015).

While the two arbitrators came to the same conclusion about the unreasonableness of the hospitals’ positions, they provided different rationales.

Kaplan’s reasoning was that the policy was illogical. Hayes’ rationale, on the other hand, was that the policy was primarily a “coercive tool” introduced by the employer “for the purpose of driving up immunization rates.”

Kaplan and Hayes recognized the employer’s obligation to ensure the health and safety of both workers and patients in a health-care context. However, both arbitrators also considered extensive expert testimonies and contested scientific evidence on the efficacy of masks and flu vaccines at eliminating the spread of infection in hospitals. While providing the strong caveat in his decision that complex scientific debates and best practices in public health should not be settled in a labour arbitration forum, Kaplan added, “One day, an influenza vaccine like MMR may be developed, one that is close to 100% effective … if a better vaccine and more robust literature about influenza-specific patient outcomes were available, the entire matter might be appropriately revisited.”

Fast forward to 2021.

Employers all over the country — and not just those isolated to high-risk healthcare settings — have introduced COVID-19 vaccination policies in the wake of a deadly pandemic. These policies range from vaccine policy “requirements” that allow workers to opt-out of vaccination and undergo rapid testing that may or may not be funded by the employer, to more extreme policy “mandates” that place unvaccinated workers on unpaid leave or threaten them with discipline and dismissal.

Most employers’ policies cite public-health guidance, occupational health and safety legislation, and/or the science as the rationale to justify these vaccine mandates. Most unvaccinated workers do not qualify for the narrow legal exemptions provided by human rights codes.

As the consequential impacts of these policies begin to be felt by unvaccinated workers, some fully vaccinated workers are also becoming increasingly concerned about employers mandating continual COVID-19 booster shots as an ongoing condition of employment. Not surprisingly, some unions are challenging employer vaccine mandate policies through grievances and labour arbitrations.

A critical question now is whether labour arbitrators will follow the previous approaches adopted by Kaplan and Hayes on employer flu vaccine mandates, or whether COVID-19 is such an unprecedented context that these cases are not applicable. The results of three recent labour arbitration cases are informative.

In Electrical Safety Authority v. Power Workers’ Union, Arbitrator Stout ruled in favour of the union that the employer’s policy, which threatened unvaccinated workers with dismissal, was unreasonable, noting that testing was a reasonable alternative. Stout also made clear his opinion of the choices of the unvaccinated, noting that his decision should not be seen as “vindication” or “a victory” for those “misguided” individuals who “choose, without a legal exemption, not to get vaccinated” as they are “acting against their own and society’s best interests.”

In Ontario Power Generation v. Power Workers’ Union, the employer’s policy required unvaccinated workers to video-record themselves taking rapid antigen tests on their own time, or be placed on unpaid leave and face dismissal. Arbitrator Murray upheld most of that employer’s policy, however, they required that the employer pay for the workers’ rapid tests. Murray further sided with the employer on their policy to bar unvaccinated workers from accessing the company gym.

In Paragon Protection Ltd. v. UFCW (Local 333), Arbitrator von Veh ruled in favour of the employer’s very stringent vaccine mandate that provided no alternative options (beyond human rights exemptions) for their security workers. Many (though not all) of the employer’s client sites had their own vaccine mandate policies. Unlike the other two cases, in this case there was a clause in the collective agreement about vaccine mandates that had been negotiated by the union and the employer prior to the pandemic. The arbitrator found the employer’s policy to be consistent with the collective agreement.

As these three cases highlight, what would have once been deemed to be an appropriate “balance” of interests, or a “reasonable” employer policy, has shifted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, at least two of the arbitrators seem to believe that testing is a reasonable alternative to mandatory vaccination.

One legal pundit has argued that the Kaplan case should have “little precedential value” today because of the high efficacy rate of the COVID-19 vaccine (95 per cent) compared to the flu vaccine. However, this number is based on short-term clinical trial data that does not take into account growing understanding that vaccine protection seems to wane.

We, on the other hand, believe that labour arbitrators who adhere to the frameworks and approaches outlined in Kaplan and Hayes will find themselves on more solid ground.

Given the emerging real-world data on COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, employer policies that differentiate between the vaccinated and unvaccinated are increasingly becoming as illogical as the previous “vaccinate or mask” influenza mandates already rejected in Ontario hospitals.

By now it should be obvious to anyone who has observed rising cases in highly vaccinated countries like Israel and Denmark , that the vaccinated can continue to be infected with COVID-19.

Granted, those who are vaccinated do substantially reduce their risk of becoming infected compared to the unvaccinated. Also, the vaccines still appear to substantially protect individuals against severe illness and death. However, there are a growing number of studies and public health officials’ acknowledging the waning efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines at preventing infection and transmission.

Infected vaccinated people have also been shown to have the same peak viral loads as infected unvaccinated people, meaning that there is little difference in transmission rates between the two groups, conditional on being infected. Moreover, it was known early in the pandemic that COVID-19 can be spread through asymptomatic transmission .

While emerging studies document different rates of decline for different groups, any short-lived efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines at stopping transmission makes COVID-19 vaccines look a lot more like the flu vaccine than the childhood MMR vaccine.

Recall that Arbitrator Hayes’ rationale in 2015 for finding Sault Area Hospital’s “vaccinate or mask” policy to be unreasonable was because it was coercive. COVID-19 mandates that require testing or threaten dismissal for unvaccinated workers are far more coercive than requiring these workers to simply wear a mask. Moreover, if COVID-19 vaccines do not stop transmission, requiring only unvaccinated workers to test, or threatening them with dismissal, are policies that are being implemented with the express objective of driving up worker vaccination rates.

If COVID-19 vaccines mostly limit negative outcomes associated with being infected for an individual worker, such as severe illness and death, but do not stop that worker from transmitting the virus to others, these mandates are akin to an employer forcing their preferred medical treatment on a worker as a condition of employment. Threatening a worker’s job is the most coercive action an employer can take, let alone using that threat to tell workers what preventative drugs they should using.

Whatever you think about the ethical position of the unvaccinated, at the heart of the coercion argument lies a much deeper ethical question about consent over medical interventions.

It is regularly repeated by pundits that unvaccinated workers have a choice — they can get vaccinated or lose their jobs. However, labour relations scholars have recognized for over a century that “absent a welfare state or substantial nonlabor family income, the choice for ordinary workers is less labor vs. leisure and more labor vs. homelessness and starvation.” (Webb and Webb, 1897, cited in Kaufman 2013, 771). As every university researcher and medical professional is aware, consent is only valid if it is informed and not coerced. In a liberal democratic society, where we do not hold people down by force to give them the jab, threatening someone’s job is the most extreme form of duress we can place on another person to get them to “consent” to vaccination.

And some workers will face even more coercion than others.

Employer vaccine mandates will have inequitable impacts because of their disproportionate consequences on the most marginalized workers. Those with the least amount of economic, political, and social power will be the most compelled by their employers to take the vaccine. A recent Saskatchewan study documented that the likelihood of vaccine refusal and hesitancy was higher among Indigenous people in the province, as well as those with lower education levels and higher levels of financial instability.

Employers have not explained why such widespread mandates are necessary, especially for workers at very low risk of exposure in the workplace. The Kaplan and Hayes cases were adjudicated for health-care workers near vulnerable patients in a high-risk hospital setting, and even in that context it was determined that mask mandates targeted only toward the unvaccinated were unreasonable.

We need more reasonable approaches to COVID-19 workplace health and safety policies that do a better job of balancing individual worker interests with the interests of employers and society. We should not place all our faith in one technology — the vaccine, and avoid unjust stigmatization of one group — the unvaccinated. Employer vaccine mandates threatening unpaid leave or job loss are overly coercive measures that will do little to prevent the continued spread of infection and will hurt all workers.

These “jab or job” mandates also coerce the least powerful workers most and serve to further polarize our society.

(This article was co-authored with Dr. Rafael Gomez and published by The Line on November 23, 2021.)

Ontario has a better option than paid sick days during COVID

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 01:32:26 GMT

A targeted basic income for low-income workers is a superior option to legislated paid sick days

Every Ontarian and their dog seems to be yelling at Premier Doug Ford to legislate paid sick days for workers. A lifetime ago, in March 2020, I wrote a piece with some colleagues about the need to introduce a basic income in Canada targeted to low-income workers during the pandemic.

We proposed that low-income workers should get a supplementary basic income whether they were working or not. The rationale was that the lowest-income workers were most likely to either lose their jobs with little access to Employment Insurance, or to continue working outside the home in essential roles. My subsequent academic research (with Kourtney Koebel) indeed showed that while many low-income workers lost their jobs, other low-income workers worked more hours during the pandemic, and disproportionately more so than higher-income workers. We referred to this as the “double-liability” of low-wage work during COVID-19.

A year into this mess, I still think I had the right idea: a targeted basic income for low-income workers is a superior policy option to legislated paid sick days.

We should have three policy objectives during this crisis. The first, facilitating the safe and ongoing operation of businesses that employ low-income workers. The second is ensuring these essential workers have the ability to choose their preferred level of exposure to the virus when working outside the home, and to refuse unsafe work. The third is providing low-income workers an alternative income source so they can afford to stay home from work when they are sick.

Legislating paid sick days for workers is not a good policy response to meet any of these objectives.

Businesses are already struggling, and shouldn’t be forced to bear the cost of paying workers who can’t work because of illness or fear of the virus.

Further, if legislated paid sick days cause worker absenteeism to rise — that is, after all, precisely what it is supposed to do — employers may respond by laying workers off. Under this scenario, workers may be afraid to take their paid sick days for fear of losing their jobs, which defeats the entire purpose.

Other research I’ve done shows that organizational compliance with employment regulations is highest in unionized workplaces — and most those already have paid sick days. Paid sick days legislation would mostly impact non-unionized workplaces and thus require a huge amount of government enforcement to ensure compliance. We had very little enforcement capacity of employment standards in Ontario even before the pandemic started, and the provincial government has even less capacity today.

The other option would be a paid sick leave program funded and administered by the provincial government. I fear this would inevitably devolve into an administrative nightmare.

We should expect businesses to provide job-protected leave for worker illness, and to maintain safe workplaces, but they should not be forced to pay for workers’ sick leave during a pandemic, and the provincial government is not equipped to manage a province-wide paid sick leave program. A possible remedy could be levying fines on businesses that experience major COVID outbreaks due to negligence, but any larger, deeper enforcement operation is likely not practical to establish in a timely manner.

So what does that leave? A targeted basic income supplement paid to all low-income workers, regardless of their work status.

This option minimizes power imbalances between businesses and low-income workers by providing the workers with an alternative income source they can count on throughout the crisis.

A targeted basic income would have also been a better policy response than the plethora of new federal and provincial income support and wage subsidy programs that were created, but that is a column for another day.

Perhaps most importantly, a targeted basic income could be framed as a collective societal “thank you” to low-income essential workers who continue to work outside the home throughout the pandemic, while the rest of us relieve our guilt by tweeting from our comfortable home isolation about the unfairness of it all.

(This post was originally published by The Line on April 20, 2021.)

The sale of MEC and state of co-ops in Canada

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 16:32:21 GMT

The pending sale of the Mountain Equipment Co-op or MEC took its 8 million members by surprise.

Click here for radio interview on CBC Blue Sky with Garth Materie.

To address the needs of Canadians during the COVID-19 crisis, we need a targeted basic income

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 23:49:33 GMT

National Post Opinion

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world how interconnected we all are, and how much we depend on each other. In Canada, it has been heart-warming to see the responses of people who are working together to protect the elderly and other vulnerable members of our communities. The situation has also highlighted that Canadians still place a lot of faith in our government and institutions, and that we are willing to act quickly and collectively to ensure that our health-care system does not become overwhelmed.

However, as borders shut down, provinces declare states of emergency and businesses close, attention has rightly turned to the impact this will have on the economy. Focusing on the economy is important, as the broad social consensus previously outlined is at risk of fracturing if the government does not develop a comprehensive plan to address the real and growing concerns of Canadians who are worried about putting food on the table and paying their bills.

Policy options abound, such as low- or zero-interest business loans, tax payment deferrals, payroll tax holidays, expanded access to employment insurance (EI), boosting the Canada Child Benefit (CCB) and GST rebates, and plans to ensure bank liquidity, along with various stimulus spending proposals. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced plans to implement several of these options.

But while some of these policies may be necessary, they are unlikely to ensure continued social solidarity, compliance with public health measures or help arrest the looming cascade of debt defaults and the resulting stress on the financial system that will only make things worse.

With the exception of expansions to EI, none of the policies announced Wednesday by the Canadian government directly deals with the obvious issue of lost wages that immediately affects unemployed workers. And, because they by and large do not target the people who need the help most, they fail to act as a necessary economic stabilizer or build trust and legitimacy among the broader public. They will not work as a means of maintaining economic activity, and perhaps more crucially, they will not secure the ongoing co-operation necessary to achieve the government's public health goals. Workers who are left behind are not likely to quietly suffer and comply.

On both an individual and collective level, Canadians are acting quickly to protect the most vulnerable during this pandemic. They would be similarly supportive of policy proposals focused on helping the most vulnerable. A targeted income maintenance approach that is conditional on income — what we refer to as a "targeted basic income" — meets the urgency of the current crisis. And, because seniors and children already have a guaranteed annual income through the Old Age Security, Guaranteed Income Supplement and CCB programs, the major remaining gap in social policy must address the needs of low-income working-age people — particularly those without children.

Working-age people who rely on employment and self-employment as their primary source of income will be most affected by widespread business closures. Working-age people who fall in the lower end of the income distribution will also be the most severely impacted, as they will qualify for lower EI benefits and are more likely to turn to social assistance in the near future due to having lower savings. With many low-income Canadians stretched by big debt loads, neither EI nor provincial social assistance benefits are likely to be enough. Moreover, asking people to apply for these benefits in the middle of a crisis — when many cannot work because of illness, quarantine or business shutdowns — is unnecessary.

For this reason, we propose that the federal government immediately implement the provision of a monthly income of $1,000 to all individual working-age Canadians (ages 18-64) who had employment or self-employment income in 2019 between $1 and $50,000. The proposed amount of $1,000 a month is slightly higher than the average monthly social assistance provided to single working-age people in each province across the country.

According to our calculations, the gross cost of this policy option is approximately $11.6 billion per month. We assume that provincial social assistance programs remain unchanged. If students are excluded, the cost decreases by about $1.4 billion. Including an additional cut-off based on total household income would more effectively target low-income families, and further reduce the cost. Given the current situation, no claw-back rate should be applied, either now, or next year at tax time. The Canada Revenue Agency could directly administer this targeted basic income, and no application would be needed.

A related policy option that addresses many of the same concerns as the targeted basic income is the universal basic income (UBI). Because people are desperately searching for creative and effective policy solutions, the idea of an emergency (short-term) UBI has attracted support from all sides of the ideological spectrum. In both Canada and the United States, the idea has received support from both progressives and conservatives, and President Trump recently announced a direct cash transfer to all Americans.

When everyone gets the same amount of money from the government, it is clearly equal. However, just as not every Canadian is equally vulnerable to the virus, not every Canadian is equally vulnerable to the impact of the economic slowdown. A UBI is therefore a less equitable policy, even in the best of times. It is also much less efficient at helping the most vulnerable than a targeted income maintenance approach that is conditional on income.

A targeted basic income is a feasible, efficient and equitable option for addressing income precarity during this ongoing pandemic. It would provide a direct economic stimulus by putting money into the hands of the people who are most likely to spend it and, more importantly, into the hands of those who are most likely to need it.

with Kourtney Koebel, Rafael Gomez, Murray Fulton, and Marc-Andre Pigeon

See original piece here: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinion-to-address-the-needs-of-canadians-during-the-covid-19-crisis-we-need-a-targeted-basic-income

Calgary Co-op rolls the retailing dice on its future

Sat, 31 Aug 2019 17:46:31 GMT

Calgary Co-op recently announced it would wholesale groceries from Save-On-Foods rather than Federated Co-operatives Limited – a bold and risky decision given the history and structure of food retailing and potential behaviour of industry players.

(Find the original op-ed here .)

Small independent retailers risk larger wholesalers dictating agreement terms, such as offering beneficial short-run terms only to raise long-term prices once the retailer is locked-in. Vertical integration is normally used to avoid this “hold-up” problem by bringing the buying and selling “in-house,” typically by integrating the wholesaler and retailer into the same company.

The Co-operative Retailing System, of which Calgary Co-op is a member, integrated differently. Independent co-op retailers that sprung up across Western Canada in the 1920s created their own provincial wholesalers to provide them with an assured supply of products (e.g., groceries, fuel) at reasonable prices, circumventing the hold-up problem. Over time, provincial co-operative wholesalers amalgamated to form FCL. With this ownership structure, local co-op retailers had a voice in wholesaler governance and shared in wholesaler profits.

Calgary Co-op was likely offered preferable short-run terms to move their grocery purchases to Save-On-Foods. Now that they have committed, they could be subject to future hold-up. We imagine a scenario where Calgary Co-op faces financial pressure to convert from a co-op and sell its assets to Save-On-Foods or elsewhere. Such an outcome could result in less competition and choice for co-op members and Calgarians. The decision also has potential spillover effects on Calgary Co-op’s ability to secure future access to other products and services they receive from FCL because retail co-ops and members outside of Calgary may struggle with the disruptions (e.g., smaller patronage payments, loss of product variety) that flow from this decision. FCL’s success depends on the support of all member co-ops, including Calgary.

How did Calgary Co-op arrive here? Presumably, the board and management believe they are making the best decision for Calgary Co-op. However, decisions do not always have their expected effects. Co-op research suggests several factors common to large co-ops that lead to risky decisions and end up in failure: seeing co-operation as the problem, having the wrong people in place, lack of board oversight of management, and overconfidence. There is evidence some of these factors may be present.

Discontinuing grocery sales from FCL suggests a lack of confidence in the co-operative model, surprising given the success the CRS has experienced over the last several decades.

The board and management of Calgary Co-op may lack understanding of the co-op model; the current CEO was hired from Sobey’s (and previously worked with Overwaitea Food Group that operates Save-On-Foods), and board members have extensive corporate experience. Strong business skills are necessary for co-op boards and managers; however, co-ops also need to have people with a deep understanding of how to leverage the unique strengths of the co-operative business model. In recent years, Calgary Co-op has used a skills gap analysis and assessment consultant to evaluate and develop endorsements for candidates. While there is nothing wrong with such practices, they sometimes over-emphasize technical skills at the expense of the co-op knowledge and experience also required for good decision-making.

Calgary Co-op’s decision suggests a high level of confidence by senior management in its ability to execute. Confidence is an important managerial attribute, but more is not always a guarantee of better outcomes. One reason for the downfall of Prairie grain co-ops like the Alberta and Saskatchewan wheat pools was management hubris. The result of this overconfidence was aggressive business expansion, overpayment for acquisitions, accumulation of large amounts of debt, the loss of member loyalty and market share, and near bankruptcy, which ultimately led to their sale. It is unclear how much consultation was undertaken with members over what is a major transformation for the co-op.

The outcome of Calgary Co-op’s decision will not be known immediately. The decision may benefit its members. However, retailing and co-operative history suggest success is not guaranteed.

Murray Fulton is professor and director, Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan; Dionne Pohler is associate professor, Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, University of Toronto; Brett Fairbairn is professor and president, Thompson Rivers University.

How can we fix the motherhood-penalty problem?

Thu, 09 May 2019 17:50:32 GMT

Dionne discusses causes and solutions to the motherhood-penalty problem with Heather Scoffield of the Toronto Star. The challenges are different for low-income mothers than middle and high-income mothers and there are no easy policy solutions.

Read the article here .

The labour movement in 2019 - What's the role of unions in an increasingly more precarious workforce?

Thu, 02 May 2019 17:52:54 GMT

On May 1st, 1886 workers striked to demand the 8 hour work day. Today workers are still demanding better working conditions for themselves and future workers. Unions have played an important role in creating better working conditions and benefits, but with the rise of the gig economy, how do we make sure those workers aren't left behind? CBC Radio Blue Sky spoke with Charles Smith, Political Science Professor at the U of S, Lori Johb, President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour and Dionne Pohler, assistant professor at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto.

Listen to the interview here .

Everyone is losing in Saskatoon Co-op, UFCW labour dispute.

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 18:55:16 GMT

There is a media spotlight on the Saskatoon Co-op/UFCW labour dispute. As an academic who studies unions, co-ops and inequality, I think it is important to lay out what we know about the parties, the dispute, and its relationship to broader inequalities.

(Read the original op-ed here .)

First, a few facts. Retail co-op workers are not on strike “throughout Saskatchewan” — Saskatoon Co-op employees are on strike. Employees of Humboldt Co-op, for instance, are not on strike. As anyone who has tried to use their Saskatoon Co-op number at a store in Humboldt discovers, it won’t be accepted there, because it’s a different business.

Saskatoon Co-op is also not “the retailer for Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL).” Saskatoon Co-op is one of 170 retailers in Western Canada that collectively own FCL. FCL is also a co-op, and most of its profits in 2018 were returned to its retail owners based on how much each purchased from FCL, similar to when retail co-ops distribute patronage allocations to their members. Saskatoon Co-op cannot access FCL’s “reported $1 billion in profit” to use in bargaining with its employees, because these profits do not all belong to the Saskatoon Co-op.

Moreover, it makes little sense for commentators to link a co-op’s profits to the profits that investor-owned businesses distribute to shareholders, who seek a financial return on their investments. This is not how co-ops work. Saskatoon Co-op is owned by people who live in the communities where it operates, and sustain the co-op through their patronage. Co-op leaders are also not compensated through lucrative shares/stock options. Yet, while Saskatoon Co-op has a different ownership structure and set of objectives than investor-owned grocery chains, it must compete with these businesses for customers, including its own members’ continued patronage.

No one outside the bargaining discussions really knows what is breaking down behind the scenes. However, we do know this. Saskatoon Co-op employees are well into their fourth month of job action over an issue — multi-tiered wage structures — that the same union local, UFCW 1400, agreed to without job action with Sobeys and Loblaws, two of Saskatoon Co-op’s largest competitors. And, the Saskatoon Co-op risks damage to its brand the longer this goes on without a resolution.

Co-ops and unions are both owned and democratically controlled by their memberships — the workers in unions and customers in co-ops. Both organizations rely on solidarity and collective action to help individuals meet shared goals such as reduced inequality in wages and access to goods and services.

Out of approximately 900 workers who were eligible to vote on the Saskatoon Co-op’s last offer, only about 360 members voted to reject it — more than half of the workers voted to accept or didn’t vote at all. Some employees have reportedly already returned to work, and some may have found other jobs. Saskatoon Co-op appears to be leveraging the lack of worker solidarity to wait out the strike.

Similarly, UFCW appears to be using the Co-op’s own democratic structure to gain bargaining leverage. A member of the Saskatoon Co-op, and former employee of UFCW, requested a special meeting to oust the Co-op’s board of directors. The request was overturned in a recent legal decision.

Both sides’ approaches undermine good-faith bargaining and turn each organization’s democratic strengths into weaknesses, doing long-term damage to worker and member solidarity. The solution: stop bargaining through the media, get back to the table, and stay there until an agreement has been reached.

While people may find it important to support striking workers — I did not cross the picket line when I visited Saskatoon in December — it is problematic to connect isolated labour disputes to a sweeping range of societal inequalities.

Rising inequality is driven more by asset ownership than organizational wage structures. Changes in work and employment due to technological advances, growing influence of finance on businesses, and the gutting of redistributive tax and transfer policies are the major culprits.

While co-ops and unions are formed and structured to address many societal inequalities, Saskatoon Co-op and its unionized workforce should not be expected to bear the responsibility for addressing all of them.

Dionne Pohler is an assistant professor in the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto, and a Fellow at the University of Saskatchewan Centre for the Study of Co-ops.

A Way Forward After the Basic Income Pilot Cancellation

Fri, 10 Aug 2018 17:52:59 GMT

No policy of the newly elected provincial government in Ontario has sparked more controversy than the cancellation of the basic income pilot. Read the original op-ed here .

( with Kourtney Koebel )

No policy of the newly elected provincial government in Ontario has sparked more controversy than the proposed cancellation of the basic income pilot. Academics have criticized the government for wasting an opportunity to collect data on an important policy issue, and basic income advocates have undertaken a massive lobbying effort to convince the government to reverse its decision.

The announcement raises serious ethical concerns around how participants relying on the basic income for the next two years will be treated during the pilot phase-out. This should be addressed by continuing payments to all participants until the original proposed end of the pilot.

However, we don’t believe the pilot’s cancellation is problematic for the realization of a basic income in Canada, and the awareness it has created among the public may provide a unique opportunity to move toward something better.

We’re both supporters of a basic income guarantee for evidence-based efficiency and equity reasons that are too numerous to outline, but, we’re also not supportive of basic income pilot experiments for a number of reasons that we discuss here . ( See also another recent academic critique of the basic income pilot here .)

We’d rather see implementation than experimentation. Those who are supportive of the implementation of a universally accessible basic income guarantee, and/or the removal of work disincentives for those on social assistance, and/or greater income security for working-age Canadians, should focus their efforts toward developing options for the phased but permanent implementation of such programs, rather than critiquing the pilot cancellation.

We already have a robust body of work in Canada and other countries on the positive outcomes of basic income pilots (including one in Dauphin, Manitoba), and also on several non-experimental cash-transfer policies and programs. The Ontario pilot was unlikely to tell us anything we don’t already know from previous pilots about the probable effects on recipients’ labor supply, education, and health outcomes. Research on the Universal Child Care Benefit in Canada and the Earned Income Tax Credit (the largest cash-transfer program in the United States) also provide evidence about the effects of programs that offer larger coverage than any pilot. We also have widely accepted theories about the possible labour supply responses of those who would be “net contributors” to funding a basic income.

So, while nothing as generous as the prototype of the basic income pilot in Ontario has ever been comprehensively implemented in any context, we do have theory, models, and studies from across academic disciplines that provide some clue about what to expect. As with any theory, model, or study, however, estimated effects rely on an informed set of assumptions applied to a particular context, and we can never be 100% certain about anything, especially when it will occur in the future.

This is why we propose that the best way forward would be a staged phase-in of a basic income guarantee. There are multiple ways this could be done. One option we are currently working on in more detail elsewhere proposes to: a) undertake the collaborative development of a framework that includes direct involvement of both levels of government and First Nations, b) expand the current Canada Workers Benefit (formerly the Working Income Tax Benefit) to include all low-income persons working or not, partially funded by removal of many non-refundable tax credits and replacement of welfare, and c) eventually fold in OAS/GIS, the Canada Child Benefit, and employment insurance.

An adequate basic income is not financially sustainable unless the federal and provincial governments collaborate in its development and share the funding burden. While there are ways the framework could be designed so that not all provinces and First Nations would have to sign on (see a two-stage proposal for a federal-provincial basic income here ), individual and household arbitrage between provinces that choose to implement a basic income or not (and also on and off-reserve) may lead to greater income inequality between the provinces and on and off-reserve First Nations peoples, which would ultimately threaten the program’s viability.

Federalism remains the greatest political barrier to the implementation and sustainability of income security for all Canadians. Overcoming this barrier requires a substantial amount of political will and co-operation, and the support of Canadians from all walks of life and communities. The implementation of a basic income guarantee is something the entire country must decide to do, together.

A Critique of Basic Income Pilots Following the Ontario Government's Announced Cancellation

Sun, 05 Aug 2018 17:52:12 GMT

Many scholars have been highly critical of the newly elected Ontario government’s announcement to cancel the basic income pilot currently underway in the province, claiming it is a wasted opportunity to collect data on an important policy issue.

(with Kourtney Koebel)

While preserving the data that has been collected to date for future research purposes is important, we are of the opinion that the pilot was unlikely to tell us anything we don’t already know from theory and previous empirical research about the probable effects of a basic income on recipients’ outcomes. There are previous studies in both Canada and other countries on the positive outcomes of various basic income pilots, and also on permanent cash-transfer policies and programs that tell us something about what we might expect.

Like many academics who span a wide range of disciplines and ideological spectrums, we are supporters of a basic income guarantee for evidence-based efficiency and equity reasons that are too numerous to outline here. However, we’re not supportive of basic income pilot experiments. Here’s why:

First, the reality of democracies is that changes in government are almost always associated with some reversals of the previous government’s policies. Pilots are even more susceptible to this than actual legislation or social programs, and the previous government implemented the pilot project too late to guarantee its completion. Other basic income pilots that have taken place in Canada – one in Dauphin, Manitoba in the 1970s and, more recently, the 2017 pilot in Ontario, ended due to changes in government. Of course, any social policy is vulnerable during a government transition. For example, child benefits in Canada have changed substantially since the first Family Allowance program came into existence in 1945. However, the relative ease of eliminating something experimental puts pilots – and the individuals participating in them – at a higher risk.

Second, while we applaud the increasing influence of behavioral research and evidence-based approaches on improving public policy interventions, both academics and policy-makers have become overly enamored with the idea of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the “gold standard” to evaluate public policies, without fully acknowledging the difficulties associated with ensuring internal and external validity in this particular context.

There were already methodological issues with the pilot that would have made the results suspect due to a lengthy application package that likely led to serious selection bias in who was motivated to apply for the program. Moreover, the pilot’s limited duration raises critical questions about whether participants would change their behavior in the same way as they would if the program was viewed as relatively permanent. The data collection associated with the pilot and interference by politicians and advocacy groups may also affect how recipients respond to the pilot – potentially in ways they otherwise wouldn’t if they weren’t being monitored.

The exclusion of the labour supply responses of those who would be “net contributors” to funding a basic income in the pilot further undermines its external validity as a way to test the feasibility and sustainability of a comprehensive program. In addition, because the basic income pilot is limited to low-income individuals and workers, researchers would not be able to make any conclusions about a “universally accessible” basic income, as middle and high-income individuals were ineligible to participate. Even if they would not have received the basic income, the opportunity to obtain it should have been available. Excluding individuals who experience a change in income limits its applicable relevance to a true basic income. Moreover, the small size of the sample relative to the broader labour market also compromises the external validity of the pilot results.

We are not alone in our reticence or are even the first to voice these concerns about basic income pilots. One of the leading worldwide proponents of a universal basic income, Philippe Van Parijs, states in his 2017 tome with Yannick Vanderborght on this topic that “experiments are not very promising in terms of what we can learn from them about the real-life sustainability of basic-income schemes…we must try to infer causal links from correlations...[using] econometric models that claim to predict…what would happen if a basic income were introduced (p. 144).” That is, a permanent basic income is likely to have effects that cannot feasibly be explored in a pilot.

Finally, and perhaps most important, Ontario’s basic income pilot was ultimately unsustainable as a provincial program, and this is important to acknowledge in light of other provincial announcements to pursue basic income studies and pilots. Any affordable implementation of an adequate basic income requires tax reform and both federal and provincial contributions , and any sustainable program requires inter-jurisdictional collaboration on development and agreement of a framework between the federal government, all provinces and First Nations communities. Provinces, on their own, could finance a very modest basic income, but to realize the full guarantee that many supporters advocate, federal-provincial coordination is necessary, as well as the opportunity for participation by interested First Nations communities in the development of a framework.

The necessity for collaboration between both levels of government creates additional issues for running a provincial pilot, as seen by PEI's unsuccessful attempt to establish a partnership with the federal government to run a basic income pilot. Federalism is still likely the biggest political barrier to its implementation and sustainability, and a pilot will tell us very little about either. The only way to identify this is by trying to actually implement a basic income, which requires nothing more than political will.

In this regard, there is also serious political risk associated with pilots. While pilots can raise public awareness, which is good, a failed or poorly designed pilot could be the nail in the coffin for future implementation of a full basic income guarantee. Moreover, pilots can be used by politicians to put off calls for the immediate implementation of necessary changes to current social policy and programs, which also negatively impacts all the people who aren’t selected to participate in the pilot.

Even if the current Ontario government is ideologically opposed to a universal basic income, Ontario has elected this government for the next four years, and there are second best alternatives. Scholars and advocates would do well to focus their attention and energies on providing the government with some of these options. During the election campaign, Ford discussed a variation of a negative income tax scheme, by proposing the elimination of taxes for minimum wage workers, and providing them with a refundable tax credit. While this does not address our major concerns about the inadequacy of supports for working-age Canadians and the problems associated with current social assistance programs, it does show that the government may be willing to consider proposals that help low income people and take seriously their concern about work disincentives. While we think the government’s concerns about work disincentives and problems with labour market attachment under a basic income guarantee are overstated - the view is solely based on the neoclassical conceptualization of work and why people work - we do think the concerns are still legitimate and need to be taken into account in designing the most effective program possible.

In our view, the lack of clarity around how current participants will be treated in wake of the pilot cancellation is the most pressing issue for the government to address in the short term, especially because the pilot participants are low income individuals and households. Canceling the formal pilot while continuing payments to all participants until the original proposed end of the pilot, and then creating a transition plan for these individuals and households would be the most ethical way to address this concern.

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